Score Another Victory for Scientists, Michael Mann, and the Freedom of Inquiry

Score Another Victory for Scientists, Michael Mann, and the Freedom of Inquiry

Yesterday in a Virginia courtroom, Michael Mann—who is quickly becoming the Galileo of climate science—triumphed over the conservative American Tradition Institute, and ongoing attempts at scientist-harassment.

More specifically, Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Gaylord Finch both allowed Mann to join the case that ATI is pursuing against the University of Virginia to get Mann’s emails, and allowed UVA to back out of an agreement with ATI to let it review some of Mann’s emails that the university is nevertheless claiming are exempt from disclosure.

This is a bit technical, as is often the case in ongoing court proceedings, but let’s remember why it matters.

The ATI lawsuit is a follow-on to Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli’s outrageous harassment of Mann. And protecting Mann’s emails from disclosure is critical for ensuring that ideological fishing expeditions that attack and harass scientists aren’t permitted. The contrary result, as many scientific groups have asserted, could have a chilling effect on academic research and freedom of inquiry in controversial areas.

Mann has been greatly supported by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Geophysical Union, and other organizations, and by grassroots fundraising efforts to support his legal expenses. To contribute see here.

Let us also add that there is no reason to think Mann has done anything wrong, scientifically or otherwise, or that his emails will reveal some malfeasance. To the contrary, Mann and other scientists involved in the pseudo-scandal of “ClimateGate” have been repeatedly vindicated by independent investigations.

Meanwhile, the connections between ATI and various other conservative and industry groups and funders have now been extensively documented.

I called Mann the “Galileo of climate science,” and increasingly, I think this is not mere hyperbole.

I’ve been following climate science, and political attacks on it, for nearly a decade. Throughout that period, conservatives have been relentlessly attacking Mann because of the hockey stick graph. And starting in 2005, there have been attempts—first in Congress, then using the legal process—to wrest information from Mann, information whose disclosure would simply allow conservative motivated reasoners to come up with new reasons to criticize and attack him.

This is a beast that, at all costs, must not be fed.

At the same time, all of this has surely exacted a serious toll on Mann himself in the form of personal stresses and, perhaps, legal expenses.

Mann has risen to the occasion, however, and fought back admirably and courageously.

In the process, he has become a hero and a role model for standing up against the forces of ideology and unreason.

Previous Comments

All of the data, code, and documentation needed to perform an independent verification of all of Mann’s work are freely available on-line. Mann’s techniques are not “black magic”; in fact, all of the information about the mathematical algorithms Mann employs can be found in college math/statistics textbooks.

The FOI demands that deniers have been submitting demonstrate that they are too lazy and/or incompetent to “roll up their sleeves” and do their own independent analysis work.

And deniers, don’t even bother with the “Mann’s method makes hockey sticks from random noise” argument. If you understand how the SVD (Singular Value Decomposition) works, it is trivially easy to distinguish a “noise” hockey-stick from a “tree ring” hockey-stick simply by looking at the full SVD output. No competent analyst would ever mistake random noise for tree-ring data.

The decline isn’t hidden. You can see in the BEST data. Specifically, you can see that as you get closer to the South Coast of the US you have a decline in temperature.

You can read up on it here;

http://berkeleyearth.org/

Specifically, page 10 in this document;

http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Berkeley_Earth_UHI.pdf

Its a well known fact that Global Warming results in temperature shifts. Not all shifts are positive. No one has said that to my knowledge. FAR shows relatively little if no change in temperature where I live.

Note that this region correlates to a massive draught, specifically a long term trend which appears to correlate to global warming;

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/sjt/drought/WCToutlook.pdf

My understanding of ‘hide the decline’ was a reference to not wanting to show that some areas are getting cooler. I think this is because lots of muppets out there think that Global Warming means that it will get warmer everywhere.

My admittedly circumspect understanding of “hide the decline” is that tree ring width is used as a proxy for temperatures going back the past few hundred years, but it was found in some modern cases that tree ring width doesn’t match well with the temperature record in some areas. So in those cases the “decline”indicated by the tree rings is supplanted by intrument readings showing something else.

As you know, Steve insisted Briffa should strictly use the 12 trees which had squiffy data. Of course… Steve couldn’t ‘actually’ do the work him self, but he could blog about it in extremely misleading terms for a year…

So… Briffa produced a peer reviewed rebuttal;

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/

Briffa’s solution was to use ALL the data instead removing the bad ones. Because as you know, they have harvested a lot more trees since they did their original report.

In any case, applying proper science and using all the available data produces the right results.

I’m not surprised if the science is pretty good. I raise challenges and objections here to see if the response seems reasonable. I’m a critic not because I think I know better but because it’s my preferred method of finding out what the thinking is on various things.

I prefer critic thank you or troublemaker or perhaps minus vote leader (mvl) . denier doesn’t feel right and I gave up on being a skeptic some time ago and Im definetely not smart enough to spell it sceptic.

The phrase “hide the decline” did not, repeat NOT, refer to temperature.

For some environmental change, tree rings fail to track the actual measured temperatures in recent decades. (Possibly invasive earthworms changed the growth of the trees.) Since the recent tree ring data was known to be flawed, it was no longer used. The old tree ring <–> temperature relationship is well established and consistent with other temperature proxies.

Again, the “decline” referred to tree ring growth.

Don’t you love the way confusionists trumpet words taken out of context.

Briffa only had so many tree’s harvested when he wrote the first paper (2000) so he was a lot more cautious about what he used.

Here’s a more recent paper with a rebuttal to Steve McIntyre. It also includes ALL the squiffy trees.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/

On the other hand, Steve McIntyre has carefully hidden the fact that he wanted to determine all of Earth’s temperatures using some 12 trees. He blogged about this, and bitched about it for a year, all the while telling the real scientists that they should just be using ONLY 12 trees.

Using proper science you can see that the errors caused by the bad trees are not simply lost in the noise. (As it should be.)

“What, exactly, is Mann trying to hide (other than the ‘decline’)? He’s just drawing more bad attention to himself by fightinh this FOI request.”

He is fighting FOI requests for the same reason Jones did with CRU& the judge accepted that argument. That deniers were simply using using as a tool to hold up research & bog realist scientists down with un necessary paper shuffling. Un-necessary, becauise all the data that deniers are freely avaialble on the web anyway.

Wait. You’re the one who made the baseless claim & I called you on it……& you ask me to prove your rumour is not a lie? Truly bizarre.

“I notice you don’t provide any links – just like you’re always screeching about others.”

Again, the onus was on your to provide evidence of your claim. Not me. But hey, because I know you have no facts, rely on rumour & are just parroting right wing smear, I will provide the link that you can’t.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-gore.html?page=0%2C0

Al Gore was born into a millionaires family. He got rich off getting in on the ground floor of Google & Apple, as well as starting other tech ventures, a cable tv company & an asset management firm. All did well & made him heaps before he even got started on the clean tech ventures.

Please provide evidence of “his $100,000 million he’s made from Global Warming” or admit you are a liar.

I’m surpised you have forgotten our last discussion 3 weeks ago about Al Gore, Rick. Remember the one where you pretty much said exactly the same thing as our TEA party friend Cuffy? It’s a bit hard now to jog your short term memory & even harder considering the mods deleted all your rubbish baseless comments which were almost identical to Cuffy’s.

In Canada we censor it. You American’s just don’t know how to do this right.

In any case, what Mann is fighting to hide his personal email, and his scientific brain farts. i.e. whether his wife has her leather and strap-on primed for an evening’s entertainment. Or how many beers he’d need to drink before he’d believe Fraud Singer.

Furthermore, lots of details in a work environment make absolutely no sense outside of that environment.

Seriously, name a corporation that wants its emails between its engineers put in public. It would be a littany of condemnation of the products. “Prototype 1 exploded again, I have no idea what is wrong with this shit.” Makes a hell of a sales brochure doesn’t it?

If someone were to read emails in my company, it would raise a few eyebrows. I use mathematical heresy (seriously wicked tricks) to get our products to work. Oh, and I don’t want the public to know just how many times I’ve managed to get my wife to go home for a nooner. Or anything really about my hobbies.

In any case Mann’s work is publicly available for you to see. Obviously you can’t understand it.

Perhaps your heros should resort to doing some real work to prove their points instead of slime ball tactics.

After years of people posting over and over again link to the overwhelming pile of evidence that the Hokey Schtick was a deliberate fraud, he and other AGW promoters simply deny there was any and continue to ask for links.

Clearly people are tired of repeatedly looking up the links that are ignored. So he (they) assumes that it has all somehow ceased to exist and they can pretend that the hokey shtick.

Once again Goebbels would be proud of the reality deniers.

One the other hand„„, We realists are STILL waiting for some evidence that the AGW theory is valid.

After all these years and all the hundreds of billions of dollars thrown at it, the theory is still just a loose theory with no real support in the science.

I consistently find a total lack of education for the skeptic so called experts. (Fred Singer is a medical doctor who thinks you should smoke.)

I consitently find a papers with completely unrelated conclusions to their thesis. Craig Loehle, Phd in forestry and mathematics, Cooling of Oceans since 2003 is bogus… his thesis measures ocean rise, not heat a seriously obvious flaw.

http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3152

Which made me wonder who published it… Energy and Climate… (With no scientists running the place, it must be hard for them to understand what they are seeing.)

Even the good denier stuff is at best incomplete. (Darwin Airport temperature reconstruction, 1 sample in 1500 is hardly worthy of concern. Why blog about it? Oh… the money trail.)

Politically:

I consistently find a clear trail of Oil Money.

I frequently find tales of fraud (like Fred Singer\Eric Seitz).

Personally:

If someone can’t make an arguement and stick to it (‘cause its right), and then keeps changing the subject when you discuss it, then they haven’t got an arguement at all. (They yell “Al Gore!” or something. Whatever.)

The scientists involved are your government your military, and your universities. There are thousands of them, they are all over the world. They do not like each other. To think they are colluding, is just plain crazy talk.

The Hockey Stick has been discredited too many times in too many ways to even talk about any more and is after all just a silly side story anyway.

The real and only relevant point of debate is Cause.

We all agree that there has been some small warming in the last 150 years. No argument there and no surprise either.

The only question that has any importance is what caused it.

If it really was caused by manmade CO2, then there might be some justification for Some resources to directed at cutting emissions.

If it was natural, then the whole AGW movement and all the money being dumped into it, is simply a waste. A waste at a time when the planet has real problems that could be resolved but ARE being ignored.

Just one example? Hunger could be eliminated easily with a fraction of what is being called for by Warmists.

So again the issue is; show some real and credible evidence that manmade CO2 is causing a problem. So far all that has been shown is theories, conjecture, some loose correlations and the output of some poorly programmed computer models.

“The Hockey Stick has been discredited too many times in too many ways to even talk about any more and is after all just a silly side story anyway.”

Then provide evidence.

“If it was natural, then the whole AGW movement and all the money being dumped into it, is simply a waste. A waste at a time when the planet has real problems that could be resolved but ARE being ignored.”

Can you remember the last time that governments & people disagreed with a consensus that encompassed the entire worlds major scientific institutions?

“Just one example? Hunger could be eliminated easily with a fraction of what is being called for by Warmists.”

Bjorn Lomborgs bait & switch technique. If world hunger, poverty, diabetes, aids, malaria etc etc were able to be easily fixed they would be. The point is, we can tackle many issues at once. We can walk & chew gum at the same time. We don’t need to stop & pool all our resources into attacking one thing.

“So again the issue is; show some real and credible evidence that manmade CO2 is causing a problem.”

The evidence show clearly that the HK is fraud has been posted and linked and referenced here so many times already that nobody even bothers anymore because we know you will simply ignore and then pretend it never happened.

It really becomes tiresome…. And really, everybody does already know full well anyway.

As for being able to walk and chew gum at the same time? I really don’t agree there.

The amount of resources that are being wasted on AGW already and the amount that is being called for is actually diverting money from real problems and really worthwhile issues.

That is the true problem with this movement. The single minded focus on doing something that will cost a ridiculous amount and accomplish nothing of any real value.

The evidence show clearly that the HK is fraud has been posted and linked and referenced here so many times already that nobody even bothers anymore because we know you will simply ignore and then pretend it never happened.

It really becomes tiresome…. And really, everybody does already know full well anyway.

As for being able to walk and chew gum at the same time? I really don’t agree there.

The amount of resources that are being wasted on AGW already and the amount that is being called for is actually diverting money from real problems and really worthwhile issues.

That is the true problem with this movement. The single minded focus on doing something that will cost a ridiculous amount and accomplish nothing of any real value.

Seriously… I don’t read random blogs. I have absolutely no idea what you read and I cannot even hypothosize as to what is confusing you.

I heard that there was this thing called ‘Climate Gate’. I looked at all the suspicious claims. I set those aside, and decided to examine all the facts. All governments who’ve done a review have cleared the scientists. I then looked closely at the trail of facts over the statements.

I cannot see anything wrong.

Who said what, and what do they know?

What does discredit mean to you? Does it mean, “Rush Limbaugh says so!” What does it mean to you? Who or what is you smoking gun or source.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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